Peanut

Peanut
at：2009-05-12 22:47:02 Click: 0
NAME: Peanut NICKNAME: Oreshek [o’re-shek] -- Russian for Peanut, which was his shelter name and we decided to keep it. Daniela, our 4-year-old daughter, speaks mostly Russian, and she was asking what Peanut was. When we told her the Russian word for it, she really liked it and banned using Peanut in our house. We do use it, though, for his vet’s appointments and for introducing him to our English-speaking friends.OWNER: Daniela Gutman HOW THEY MET: The preface to the whole story is that I used to have a dog for 17 years, and she passed away last October. Daniela was begging me for an orange kitten for a couple of months to introduce the cat to the dog –- she didn’t realize that the dog was gone as the dog was old and never paid attention to the baby anyway....So when I broke the sad news to Daniela in February, she was very upset, but said that it was great to have the dog for so long, even though now she is all alone and has nobody to play with. Then I was ready to bring home the whole shelter-worth of cats just to make her stop crying. So I promised her to go to a shelter together for her to choose a kitten. The next day I was being a bit sneaky about the choosing part and checked out Petfinder.com looking for orange kittens. I found Peanut right away and after work dropped by the Baltimore County Humane Society to meet him before I let my daughter “choose.” He spotted me the moment I walked into the room and started pacing the cage meowing. He was about 4 months old -- very cuddly, soft and cute (of course -- he is a kitten after all), so I filled out all the papers and scheduled an official appointment (more of a setup really) for Daniela to “choose” him. The next day, we all (Daniela, I, and my husband) came to “look at the kittens.” Needless to say, we had been approved for Peanut, and his documents were all ready for us to pick him up....So Peanut was the first kitten to get into my daughter’s hands, and the little guy did great with her -- he courageously tolerated all her hugs and smooches and seemed to actually like them! So she was all his the moment he purred in her arms and happily “chose” Peanut. AGE: About 6 months HOME: ReisterstownBREED: Orange tabby BEST TRICK: Yelling “Ma-ma” while I’m in the shower. His “talking” made half of the vet’s waiting room laugh. The other half just couldn’t hear him.FAVORITE ACTIVITY: Playing with the fishing pole and listening to Daniela reading to him (I suspect he is using the reading time for getting some rest from being carried around).FAVORITE FOOD: We try to keep him on kitten’s food, but he did try the baked fish once and was extremely happy!HIS DISLIKES: He does not appreciate any other animals around (especially cats). We welcomed a neighbor’s cat in our house and that caused some major hissing from Peanut. I was not even aware that he knew such words! IF PEANUT HAD A MOTTO FOR LIFE, IT WOULD BE: Your house is my house, your closet is my closet, and my mommy is my mommy!Photo by Gina Gutman To see other pets that have been featured in Collared, click here.Want your pet to be featured in Unleashed? Click here to download the Collared questionnaire. Fill it out and email it to us, along with a web-sized jpeg, at unleashed@baltsun.com.